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The NFL has dealt with plenty of scandal this century, but this offseason was pretty rough. Accusations of racist hiring practices, star players charged with sexual assault, and owners behaving badly have all been embarrassments for the league. None of that has affected the bottom line. TV ratings are as high as ever and NFL programs dominate the Nielsen top ten. Our host Juana Summers talks to Ke...

More than 55,000 people in the U.S. are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to research from The Sentencing Project. Behind bars, they are largely unseen and unheard. The Visiting Room Project is an effort to change that. It's a collection of first-person testimonials of people who are serving life sentences. We hear inmates tell their stories and talk with Calvin D...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated billions of dollars to Puerto Rico to help it rebuild from Hurricane Maria with more resilient infrastructure. Five years after the storm, only a tiny fraction of it has been spent, and Hurricane Fiona has again left much of the island in the dark. NPR's Adrian Florido explains how Fiona has left some Puerto Ricans feeling like their recovery h...

As record numbers of people in the U.S. die from drug overdoses, communities are searching for tools to prevent them. A new program in Canada could serve as a model. Over the past few years, government-approved clinics have opened across the country, where people can use street drugs under medical supervision. If they overdose, they can get life-saving care immediately. Some doctors are even presc...

For many in the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth was synonymous with the monarchy. As she's laid to rest, King Charles faces a potentially "existential" challenge in convincing the British and global public that the monarchy is a force for good, according to historian Dan Jones. That may be a difficult task in the Commonwealth, a group of 56 countries connected in part by a history of British colon...

Since a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for college athletes to profit from the use of their name, image, or likeness - NIL for short - athletes are popping up in ads selling everything from protein shakes to air conditioners. Host Michel Martin speaks with Ramogi Huma, founder and President of the National College Players Association, about the hurdles that keep some college players from cashi...

For the past six months, dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles have been striking almost every weekend. This is because the strippers say they've faced unsafe working conditions, including assault and harassment from customers. After the dancers say they were unable to meet with club managers to discuss their demands and were not allowed to work, they launched an effort to for...

It's a strange moment in the pandemic. Mask mandates and other restrictions have all but disappeared. For most vaccinated people, the risk of severe illness has gone way down. But hundreds of people are dying of COVID-19 every day. For their loved ones, grieving a terrible loss as the country is moving back to normal can be jarring. Everyday Americans are weighing the threat the coronavirus poses...

Over the past week, the Ukrainian military has retaken thousands of square miles of territory from Russian troops, in a counteroffensive east of Kharkiv. Retreating Russian soldiers left behind tanks and ammunition as they fled. We'll hear the stories of Ukrainians who spent months under Russian occupation, and take a look at what the counteroffensive means for the next phase of the war. This epis...

Social media platforms have helped fuel political polarization and incitements to violence across the globe, from the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This is because algorithms consistently select content that evokes anger and outrage from its users to maximize engagement. And sometimes, those extreme emotions turn into extreme actions. New York Time...

A lot of mobile homes aren't actually that mobile. They're brought in trucks in big pieces, then screwed together and put up on foundations. At that point they're basically just houses, with one major exception: the people who own those houses, if they live in a mobile home park, often don't own the land underneath them. That can leave them at the mercy of the big companies that own and manage the...

Even if you have never walked the red carpet at the Met Gala, or sat in the front row of a Fashion Week runway, the notion of fashion is hard to escape. For some of us, what we wear – whether it's Gucci or the GAP–is about more than just the clothes on our bodies. Fashion is often about who we are - our ideas, identity, and culture. For those who cover and create fashion, it can be a way to challe...

Quiet quitting. It's a buzzy topic in the workplace and on social media, sparked by a viral TikTok video earlier this summer. So what does it mean? For some workers, it's simply doing what's in your job description and nothing more. For others, it's about setting boundaries and focusing on work-life balance. Quiet quitting doesn't actually involve quitting a job. But as workplace culture has chang...

Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch of Britain since 1952, died on Thursday at the age of 96. She reigned for longer than any other ruler of the United Kingdom, spanning seventy years and fifteen prime ministers. NPR's Frank Langfitt brings us the story of her life and reign, including the ups and downs of the royal family during her tenure. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segm...

For more than a month, residents of Jackson, Mississippi, have not had access to safe drinking water. The city is under a boil water advisory after problems with the pumps at the city's main water treatment plant. It's the latest emergency in a city that has had problems with its water system for decades. We talk to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan about efforts to fix J...

Traffic fatalities have surged since the early days of the pandemic, reversing a persistent decline since the 1970s. Roads in the U.S. are now more dangerous than they've been in 20 years. Vox's Marin Cogan tells us about the deadliest road in the country, a stretch of US-19 in Pasco County, Fla. And we speak to Ryan Sharp, director of transportation and planning in Hoboken, N.J. That city has man...

When Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in 2017, she was in the midst of reporting on corruption within the island's government. After her death, a small team of reporters picked up her work where she left off, determined to find the people behind her assassination. In this episode, we'll talk with one of those reporters — Stephen Grey from Reuters — about their investigation, wh...

After decades of scandals over horrible conditions, many states are reimagining prisons and jails and reusing those properties to benefit the community. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy

After the 2016 election – and Russian hacking attempts targeted at local election offices – hundreds of local governments across the country made changes. Among them, installing something called an Albert sensor. It's designed to warn of hacking attempts. But in Washington State, this cybersecurity tool has become the subject of suspicion on the political right. It's part of a trend that one votin...

Students in Uvalde, Texas are going back to school for the first time since a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School back in May. But parents and kids are still worried about security in the district — and some families are opting to homeschool instead of going back in-person. NPR's Juana Summers spent a week in Uvalde speaking with families about how the community is...

It's been 17 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, permanently changing life for many people across the country. Over a thousand were killed, and many more were displaced. The city suffered billions of dollars of damage. New Orleans has slowly recovered over the years, but for many, the trauma of the natural disaster lingers on. NPR's Juana Summers talks with filmmaker Edward Buckl...

Serena Williams dominated tennis for the better part of two decades. Her athleticism and aggressive style changed the way the women's game is played. And she inspired a generation of young Black players who followed in her footsteps. Coco Gauff was one of them. At 18 years old, she was born five years after Williams' first Grand Slam singles title. Today, she's ranked 12th in the WTA rankings. "Gr...

This summer, just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the story of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio became a flashpoint in the national abortion debate. The girl had become pregnant as a result of rape and had to travel across state lines to Indiana to get an abortion. For one rape survivor, the case reminded her of what she lived through long ago, before Roe was the law the of the lan...

Across the country, some teachers are deciding not to return to the classroom this September. The pandemic didn't create the problem of teacher burnout, but it made a bad situation worse. Fed up with low pay, hampered by partisan politics intruding in the classroom, and shaken by the recent Uvalde shooting, many say they have reached their breaking point. Teacher vacancies have left school distric...

President Biden's plan to forgive federal student loan debt – up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for others who qualify – leaves millions of borrowers with unanswered questions. NPR's Sequoia Carrillo and Carolina Rodriguez of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York, examine the new plan and help answer some of the frequently asked questions about how it w...